


Eliot's favorite breakfast place

by NienteZero



Category: Leverage
Genre: Breakfast, Food, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 22:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21089054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NienteZero/pseuds/NienteZero
Summary: Quick series of sketches from a prompt





	Eliot's favorite breakfast place

There were a lot of places that Eliot might say were his favorite breakfast place.

His favorite breakfast place in Portland was Voodoo Doughnuts. Not because of the doughnuts which were way too sugary for his tastes. But because watching Parker try different flavors would always make him smile. It was a sweet routine. About once a month they'd go and he'd let Alec and Parker pick a dozen while he grumbled about the horrifying selections. 'Bubble gum dust', really? Then he and Alec would try to keep at least a couple of doughnuts free of bite marks while Parker got increasingly giggly, and Alec bitched about Eliot's perfectly reasonable complaints.

Of course back home there'd been a diner just outside of town in an old railway car. A real old railway car, not just a building made to look like one. The cooks and waitresses knew Eliot from when he was a little kid and he didn't have to order before they had a plate of steak and gravy, sunny side up eggs, potatoes, a biscuit on the side, and a mug of coffee in front of him. There was always plenty of local gossip to be had, and for a while he'd had a thing with the younger waitress that made it worth getting up early on a Saturday.

A yum cha place in Sydney's Chinatown one Sunday morning. Eliot, Parker, and Hardison had been doing a job in New Zealand, and Parker had planned a trip over to Sydney afterwards - something about the world's largest opal being kept in a filing cabinet in an office building. Alec was pretending he knew everything about the dumplings and other specialities rolling out from the kitchen in cart after cart, while Parker rapid-fired questions at Eliot about the food, and he told her about all the different tastes and what they were. The contentment of being with his crew and sharing what he loved with them. He was pretty sure that Parker had a giant chunk of rock in one of her suitcases, but he had a steamer full of siu mai in front of him and life was good.

There was a place in Milan a couple of years before he met the crew. He'd been laying low there after a messy job in Switzerland. The safe house was in a neighborhood just outside the Roman walls that was an odd mix of the truly ancient and of mid-century post-war apartment buildings. A small café nearby served simple breakfasts - flaky croissants quite different from any he'd had in France, with the most delicate ricotta Eliot had ever tasted, fresh berries and stone fruits, jams and syrups made from bitter and fragrant citrus fruits that didn't appear to have English names. The coffee, of course, was transcendent. He'd maybe lingered in the area longer than he needed to. It was worth it to sit in the sun every morning, the bitter taste of coffee in his mouth, the sound of the city, mothers walking kids to school, people bustling to work, the cars, the birds, the buzz of motorbikes, to sit and close his eyes and just be there. 

But right now, right here, this was Eliot's favorite breakfast place. Frozen waffles shoved in a toaster in the lobby of a cheap motel but they were all alive. He'd got Alec out of the way of a speeding truck; Parker had made it off a roof right before the gunfire started in the warehouse below; he himself was not much more bruised or busted up than usual. Things had gone wrong fast. They'd need to lick their wounds and regroup. But they got out, they got somewhere safe, and the stale, freezer burned waffle with a smear of cheap butter from a single serve packet and bad grape jelly tasted like the best thing he'd eaten in years.


End file.
